Chapter Two Hundred Twenty–Three
“Jesus Christ. Nothing Bartlett. Just go easy on yourself. Don’t feel son guilty. After uit – Quinn twice with a sniper rifle. I doubt she’s had any miraculous changes of heart sinew she’s going to want blood. So when she wakes up. I’d play it carefully can’t afford to t
Oh no? I ask tiredly, making my way upstairs. Why’s that?
“Because,” Timmons chuckles. “Quinn and Gryff are bringing in one hell of a prize tonige
“What?” I snap, “Really?”
Timmon’s eyes are bright with excitement. Tonight we’ll finally get to fod oor
“What do you mean if he’s the one? I snart. Of course he’s the one! He has t
“He’s definitely the one who has been breaking into the bar. And according to s but he swears he didn’t start it.”
What? That can’t be true, can it?
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The Pack: Rule Number 1 – No Mates
Chapter Two Hundred Twenty–Four
CANE
“It’s not too late, Cane. You can still make a better choice, Roman campaigns from his place on the ground, but I ignore him. “You are the perfect student. The perfect partner. I never should have left you here this morning. If I’d only just trusted you and taken you with me this would not be happening.”
“You’re right about that. Ted would probably be free right now, and you and I would already be back here pretending to be family. I grin. getting tired of looking at his face, but refusing to look away for even the briefest moment. His bullet wounds are looking a little black and his complexion somewhat gray, but he’s not tied up and he hasn’t made a move to remove the silver bullets himself, so that tells me one thing. He wants to appear as weak and sickly as he can. Dawn it. I really should have loaded more silver bullets in this gun.
“You call it pretending, I call it revamping, Roman gasps, flashing me a quick smile.
“Are you going to shut him up, or should I?” I hiss, watching helplessly as Quinn attempts to master Roman’s state of the art tranquilizer gun. “Because I promise you this, if you don’t juice him in the next five minutes, I’m going to turn him into a permanent slot machine.”
“So bloodthirsty, Quinn jokes. “Try and have a little patience. I just want to be sure I give him enough.”
“Seriously?” I grumble, “There’s no reason why you can’t shoot him with it twice. If the first hit doesn’t do the job… try, try, again.”
“What’s the rush?” Quinn argues, his yellow–brown eyes twinkling in a way that tells me we are definitely waiting for something.
“The rush is he’s fucking up to something and I don’t have even the smallest idea what it is,” I say with my eyes trained on Roman’s face.
Roman chuckles, “That’s my boy.” Then n he smirks. “We really could have made a great team. Practically share the same blood. Were you aware that I fucked your mother?”
“Whoa!” Quinn glares, shaking his head. “Chill out Old Dog. Are you trying to die?”
“That’s not surprising.” 1 quip. “I hope she made it special.”
“Jesus Christ,” Quinn giggles.
“Oh, she definitely did. She even gave me the key to paradise that night Roman tosses out. “A very gracious hostess, your mother. She set the table and I devoured the meal. She knew she wasn’t the one I really wanted, so she offered me a sweeter deal. I mean, I knew the lady was ruthless, but I had no idea how jealous she was of her daughter. I had no idea how far she was willing to go just to ruin her.”
Fuck. Do not listen to this shit. What’s done is done. Fucking up now won’t change the past.
“What the fuck is he talking about?” Quinn hisses, the tranquilizer gun trembling in his grip. “Is he talking about your sister?
“Maybe,” I shrug. I’m doing my very best not to hear him, so who knows? You should probably do the same.”
“That’s right,” Roman chuckles, his attention on Quinn. “You’re the new flavor of the month then. Delilah certainly gets around, doesnt she? Roman eyes him suggestively. Those hips of hers were practically made to take a man good and deep.”
Holy fuck Fm going to be sick.
“What the fuck did you say?” Quinn snarls.
“Oh, come now. You heard me. You’re a wolf. And not just any wolf. An Alpha. At least, you were supposed to be, Roman taunts.
“And you’re a rogue. An outcast. An unwanted reject that needed to belong so badly that he chose to join a cult of humans. And what
Chapter Two Hundred Twenty–Four
would they say, if they knew? Huh?
Huh? What woul
would they say if they found out you were nothing but a stray fucking dog?” Quinn challenges.
But Roman continues to smile. “What makes you think they don’t already know?”
Okay, that gets my attention.
Sow–of–a–birch… maybe they do know. Not all of them of course, but the council…
My mind stutters for a moment as I try to dredge up exactly what foman’s words to me were when I told him that I wanted to pledge
“You will have to make the ultimate sucrifice.” I didn’t have a girlfriend or wife, so he chose the next best thing, I suppose. Charlie, my best friend.
So, I beat him up and took two strips of Charlie’s Blesh. Flesh that was immediately placed in some kind of crystal mason jar full of liquid and taken away. I didn’t think it was odd that they kept it at the time, but now that I think about it, I had seen jars like that before along some of the Elder’s walls.
Roman was so proud of me after I threw Charlie into the river. He boasted that there hadn’t been a sacrifice as powerful as mine since his own personal tribute, when he first pledged,
Roman’s wall is the biggest and most decorated. And the very first prize on display is the oldest and most protected piece. The only heart in any of the collections in the whole of the compound. A heart encased in a medium sized, locked silver book. I guess I always assumed it was the heart of a shifter. A shifter that he killed and had died in human form. But what if it hadn’t been a shifter? What if the heart that Tay inside the box was human?
And not just any human.
His greatest sacrifice.
A symbol of his loyalty.
Holy shir
“You sacrificed your mate,” I say flatly and Roman’s eyes darken. “You had a human mate and you killed her to satisfy the Elder Few. It was the only way you could prove you were loyal to them. So you carved out her heart and put it in a fucking box just so they would accept you. Just so you could belong.”
Roman’s face turns purple with anger and his eyes begin to swirl with gold.
“What the fuck?” Quinn hisses. “Seriously?”
“Was it worth it?” I can’t help but ask him. “Do you ever miss her? I’m just curious, because I know you wanted us to be a family. You and me. I felt that. I could tell it was real. So I’m wondering… if you could go back and do it again… would you kill her? Or would you-
*She didn’t want me,” Roman says in a voice so quiet I almost don’t notice him picking at his kneecap with his right hand. “She called me a monster, so a monster is exactly what I gave her.” Then Roman smirks glancing at Quinn, She was a redhead too.”
Reaching down with both hands, I snap Roman’s wrist before he can dig the bullet out and he howls with pain. I smile, “Nice try.”
Then I stand up and hand Quinn the gun. “Keep this on him I’ve got to grab a few things and then we have to leave. They’ll be on their
way
“Who will be? A voice snaps from the doorway.
A tall, overly muscular, exceptionally male version of Cayle stands on the porch, chest heaving and dick swinging,
